A few words, photos, random thoughts shared with my family and friends. If anything you see here makes you laugh or touches you in some way, please leave a comment or send me an email so I know you are out there.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Morning Folks! Remember Saturday AM to say your rabbits. I hope I remember this month. I haven't been too good at remembering the last couple of months.

Now that we have dealt with the rabbits, let's talk about ducks! Ed and I spent the night after Thanksgiving in Memphis,, home of Elvis and Graceland, at the Peabody Hotel, the grand hotel of the south. This was a wedding gift from my pals back in Massachusetts.

The Peabody is a lovely old hotel and we were treated to special accomodations on the Club Level that included hot hors d'eouvres and wine at the cocktail hour in a special lounge, pastries with turn-down service at night and a special concierge just for that floor, which is the 12th floor, the top floor with a lovely view.

wine and hot hors d'eouvres in our private lounge. (They had chocolate chip cookies, too. yum.) Breakfast was served here in the morning. It was really very, very nice.

The room was really beautiful. Very elegant. One of the MOST comfortable beds I have slept in...EVER!

Ed agreed that it was very comfy!

After a lovely dinner in an Italian restaurant downstairs, we came back to the room to find pastries and bottled water. The Bose radio was playing beautiful classical music, the lights were low and a robe was laid out on the bed.

I enjoyed a glass of wine in my robe. (sorry my wine loving friends. It was white Zin.)

Elegant bath with TV and telephone.

nice shampoos. lotions and a ducky soap.

View of Memphis from top floor of the Peabody.

Lobby of the Peabody decorated for Christmas

Lansky's is a gentlemen's clothing store in the lobby. This is the store where Elvis bought his clothes. Ed had to try on a few things, including this fedora.

The Peabody is known for a tradition that started 70 years ago by a couple of duck hunters well into their cups thinking it would be funny to put live ducks in the lobby fountain. So ever since then, there are live ducks in the fountain in the lobby. They live on the roof, in the Duck Palace.

(At Thanksgiving dinner, I told our grandson we were going to this hotel where for almost 100 years they had ducks going up and down in the elevator, etc. He said "There are 100 year old ducks there?" I guess I didn't explain it very clearly. )

Each morning at 11:00, they are led into the elevator by the duckmaster and descend to the lobby where they waddle up the red carpeted steps into the fountain.

Lobby fountain awaiting ducks arrival.

People gathered all around and blocked our view, but it was still fun. At 5:00 every evening, they reverse the trip and go back up in the elevator to their rooftop palace.

The elevator floors are inlaid with a duck design. Everything is ducky at the Peabody.

One of the desserts in one of their restaurants with the "ducky" theme.

If we had more time we would have taken a carriage ride. One of several out in front of the hotel, this one was all lit up and was in the shape of Cinderella's coach.

This little guy, seated in the driver's seat and dressed like Santa was waiting for his next customer.

There was another carriage, too, but we don't think the driver ever bathes. YeeHaw! I don't think he had many customers.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

I just want to take the moment to wish you all A HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I hope this year you will get to see or at least talk to all the people you love. I will really miss my boys, but as our kids call Ed's sons, their brother's from another mother John and Joe are coming, and maybe Nephew Danny and of course the grandkids. So there will be plenty of loved ones gathered around our table. Ed is doing the cooking, (Something else to be thankful for!) I have already gotten a good start on the baking and the house is spic and span. So, it should be a wonderful day.

This year, when you are watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, notice the band playing at 10:26, or at least that's the schedule that was in the paper. The Ooltewah Highschool Marching Band should be on your TV screen at that time. As you watch you can say "Hey I know someone who lives in Ooltewah!" That's big news around here as you can imagine.

Friday morning, Ed and I are heading to Memphis for a couple of days to spend what promises to be a very special night at the Peabody Hotel, "the south's grand hotel" courtesy of my wonderful "gang" of friends back in Mass. A gift certificate for one night's stay with very fancy accomodations on the exclusive "club" floor, (the top floor) was a wedding gift from Rick and Kitty, George and Melonhead, Linder and Frank, Elizabeth and Malaryn and Denny. There might be a blog in there, So, stay tuned!!!

I am so thankful for my family and friends on Thanksgiving, just like I am every day of the year. But, it's nice to actually all be thinking about it at the same time!So, Sing a verse of We Gather Together, carve that old bird, dig into the marshmallows and sweet potatoes, that green bean casserole or that jello salad. Slice the cranberry nut bread and the apple pie; watch the parade, the football games, take that after dinner constitutional or snooze... Then kiss your kids if you are lucky enough to have them with you, or your parents or friends and say a prayer of thanks to God that they are in your life. Ed and I have so much to be thankful for this year. I hope you do, too. You are all in our hearts and thoughts. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!!!!

Monday, November 05, 2007

(Reminder: clicking on some images will enlarge them. After looking at the larger image, use your back arrow key to return to the blog.)

Everybody’s going green these days. And Ed and I found ourselves going a little green without even knowing it. Ed wanted cloth napkins to bring with his lunch everday.

He thought it would add a little something to his lunchbreak.

So, we bought a few inexpensive cotton napkins in a variety of colors at our local department store.I liked the idea of using cloth napkins because they seem kind of homey, country...Southern. So I went back and got enough for us to use everyday at home.

The first night I set the table with them, I felt like we were in an episode of Leave it to Beaver. Or that we should be eating with Aunt Bea, Opie and Andy.

Or maybe Lassie and Jeff would come flying in, screen door banging in their wake. (They probably had paper napkins by the time Timmy came around.)

Now these aren’t the fancy cloth napkins I have that match the table cloth and have to be ironed. These are nice hearty gingham that I just toss in the washer and dryer. And it is really a nice change.

As many of you know, I moved from the northeast to Tennessee almost a year ago. And as many of you also know, there is a certain amount of culture shock between those two locations. But aside from the obvious differences in the demographic profiles, one of the differences I see every day when I finish with a Diet Pepsi bottle or use the last drop of Tide or Ed finishes the Sudoku in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, is that there is virtually no recycling down here.There is a recycling center about 5 miles from here, open for a few hours and only 3 days a week.

But there is no 5 cent deposit on your Mr. Pibbs or Dr. Pepper cans; no recycling bins provided by the trash companies who pick up your trash twice a week without fail;

and no Boy Scouts doing paper drives, at least none that I know of.

At first, it felt like a guilty pleasure and sort of freeing to get rid of the paper every day by just dumping it in the trash. It is such a pain to have them pile up in the garage.

And just tossing those soda cans instead of having to bring them down to the store to redeem the deposit was so much easier.

But I feel very guilty about that and realize that here, where recycling is really inconvenient and not mandated, it takes some real effort to do it.

I will concede that in this land of SUVs and pickup trucks, (with or without gun racks) over $70 million dollars in grants and incentives are in this year’s state budget to develop and implement the use of alternative fuel. Mandates have been issued and there are already 20 biodiesel fuel stations in Chattanooga alone.

In fact recently the Chattanooga City Council approved a contract with a company to turn the "sludge" from the landfill into bio-diesel fuel. They anticipate 2,000 gallons of fuel from every 60 wet tons of sludge and they produce 400 wet tons every single day. (Eeeeeeeeeyoooooo)

I always grumbled about recycling back up north. Sort of felt like it was something they forced us to do, against our will. Voted against the bottle bill and everything. But now, living in the Volunteer State, land of the Great Smokies and Lookout Mountain;

home to favorite sons Al Gore, Fred Thompson,

Morgan Freeman and Justin Timberlake,

and favorite daughters Tina, Dolly and Oprah and Aretha,

How can I help but to take care of this place in some small way? So, cloth napkins are a start. Who knows what's next?